Saint Augustine
Who Was
Saint Augustine?
by JACK WELLMAN
Here
is a look at one of the greatest Christian’s in history, Saint Augustine.
Augustine
of Hippo
Saint Augustine or Augustine of Hippo
(354-430), was nothing like a saint when he was young, probably like most of
us, but this man is regarded as perhaps the greatest thinker, philosopher and
theologian in the first one thousand years of the church.
Jerome said that Augustine had breathed
fresh air into the ancient faith and made it like new again, as it was in the
apostle’s day.
Augustine may have been the greatest
Christian thinker of his day, and perhaps since the Apostle Paul, who himself
may have had no equal in his day.
Augustine’s “Confession” and “City of
God” have shaped our Christian thinking even today, and these are still
considered to be classics.
Augustine’s exegesis of Scripture laid a
foundation for the coming medieval and contemporary Christian thought.
However, in the beginning it would have
seemed highly unlikely, because Augustine grew up with parents that were by no
means wealthy.
He was born and raised in Thagaste, located
in the modern day city of Souk Ahras, Algeria, but he had to borrow a lot of
money to complete a first class education, and so went on to study at Thagaste
until he went to Carthage.
It was there, in that great African city in
Roman Africa, that he learned rhetoric, and that changed his life … but it also
changed history.
Augustine
to Rome
When Augustine traveled to Rome with his
newly acquired skills in rhetoric, he practically fell into one of the best
jobs he could have ever hoped for.
He was hired as imperial professor of
rhetoric at Milan (Italy). It was one of the most prestigious positions in
society, but something was wrong. He was not fulfilled.
After two years of teaching, he quit and
returned to his hometown of Thagaste. It was only by God’s divine providence
that Augustine was somehow forced into being the junior clergyman at Hippo, a
coastal city just off the coast of Thagaste.
Before
Christ
I would mark the time before Augustine
became “Saint Augustine” as BC or Before Christ, because like many of us who
were not saved, we lived lives that were deserving of the wrath of God.
All that we and
Augustine were doing was “storing up wrath for yourself on the day of wrath when God’s righteous
judgment will be revealed” (Romans 2:5).
Augustine ignored his mother’s advice to
marry the girl he had been seeing. Instead, he had a 15-year affair with her,
along with an illegitimate son. However in the Roman society in which he lived,
this was not even the least bit scandalous.
Interestingly, Augustine’s studies of the
philosophies of the world, which were diametrically opposed to Christianity,
actually brought him closer to Christianity.
It was in the process of studying these
different philosophies of the world that he began to move closer and closer to
the knowledge of God.
In an ironic way, Augustine was not
influenced by Christianity, at least at first, but his influence on
Christianity would be indelible, and would forever leave its mark.
Augustine’s Abilities
Some people have been given great skills
and abilities, others have developed them, and all Christians have been gifted
supernaturally (gifts of the Spirit).
But Augustine broke the mold, having all
three! No human next to the Apostle Paul could have defined and defended Christianity
as good as Augustine did.
He was able to articulate to the church and
his opponents, the philosophical and rational reasons that Christianity is the
one, true religion to which we can have access to God, thereby allowing us to
enter the City of God.
When Augustine became Bishop of Hippo in
395 or 396, he held that office until the day he died (430).
During that time, Saint Augustine was able
to cement the still-young church upon a solid foundation upon which it could
stand by expressing applicable ways to understand the Bible.
He was able to express in words what many
other Christian leaders of the day could not, and this allowed the church
leaders and lay people to keep to the center the church and fixed upon the
Rock.
Augustine contended for the faith that was
once delivered like none had done since Paul’s day (Jude 1:3).
Augustine was
aware that “certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago
were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of
our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ” (Jude 1:4-5).
That’s why he destroyed the arguments of
Pelagius, and his followers, who believed that original sin did not taint human
nature and that mortal will is still capable of choosing good or evil without
special revelation or action from God.
This belief is called Pelagianism, and
Augustine knew it was contrary to the biblical doctrine of the free gift of
God’s grace (Ephesians
2:8).
It was God’s initiating our salvation and
completing our salvation, not we who came seeking after Him, thereby
contributing to our salvation.
Augustine argued from Scripture that we are
not capable of choosing good (Ephesians 2:1) or seeking after
God (Romans
3:10-12).
This is why Augustine’s appearance in
church history is so crucial. It kept the church grounded in the faith once delivered.
Conclusion
Few would argue that Saint Augustine or
Augustine of Hippo, was the most influential man in Christendom, and his
writings, next to the Holy Scriptures themselves, impacted Christianity like
nothing else ever had.
Augustine’s “Summa Theologica” was often used by Martin Luther and John Calvin
as part of their defense for standing by the essentials of the faith, like “Scripture alone” (Sola Scriptura) is
our only authority.
Saint Thomas Aquinas quoted the works of
Augustine throughout his writings, but it all began when Augustine was spending
time in a garden where he was contemplating his overwhelming guilt about the
immoral lifestyle he was living.
It was at this very moment that it is said
a girl’s voice chanted, “take up and
read.”
The next thing you know, Augustine is
reading from Romans 13:13–14 and the power that is found in the gospel of
salvation is unleashed (Romans
1:16; 1 Corinthians 1:18).
This causes Augustine to put his faith in
Christ. And of course, that changed history.
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Jack Wellman is a father and grandfather and a
Christian author, freelance writer, and pastor at the Mulvane (KS) Brethren
church in Mulvane, Kansas. Graduate work at Moody Bible Institute. His books
are inexpensive paperbacks that are theological in nature: “Teaching Children
The Gospel/How to Raise Godly Children,“ “Do Babies Go To Heaven?/Why Does God
Allow Suffering?,“ "The Great Omission; Reaching the Lost for
Christ," and “Blind Chance or Intelligent Design?, Empirical Methodologies
& the Bible."
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